Known for her Ms Goody Two-Shoes Image Diya is currently enjoying being bad in Hyderabad.
In Suparn Verma's Acid Factory she plays a girl locked up in a factory with four men with apparently no way out.
She's being made to do the most impossible stunts. But Diya doesn't mind.
Diya is the only woman in the entire script. "What I enjoy is being one of the boys. I'm doing everything that the boys are being made to do. And that includes all the stunts.
After playing dainty utterly feminine roles I'm enjoying being put on a harness dangling from ropes, jumping from heights, kicking and punching. In spite of my dainty image I've always been a tomboy. "
What Diya enjoys even more is being mean.
"My character is bad through and through. No apologies. No justification. She just enjoys being bad. I like bringing that dark side of me out on screen because there's way I can tap into it in real life.
I like the surprise element in my role in Acid Factory. I remember seeing a film with Julia Roberts where she was a schoolteacher by day and quite naughty in the night."
Diya just finished shooting with the Big B in Shoojit Sircar's Shoebite.
"Though we were co-stars in Shootout At Lokhandwala we didn't have any scenes together. In Shoebite most of my vital scenes are with Mr Bachchan. And believe me it was like going to acting school.
He taught me one thing I'll never forget. 'To be a good actor you've to be a good listener.' I'm going to follow that mantra, " says the quietly attentive Diya who admits she's an introvert.
"It was hard for me to come out and play the aggressive bad girl in Acid Factory or be part of the goofy comedy in Kunal Vijaykar's Fruit & Nut. I'm basically quiet and shy. I like to read and write."
Diya admits there's no man in her life. "Oh, the amount of men I'm linked with! Where's the time? Sometimes when I see my my friends with their soul mates I do wish I had someone to cuddle. But then I quickly move on to something else."
By Subhash K Jha
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